Let’s be honest - we all respond better to messages when they connect with us on a personal level. We also all collect email addresses and are potentially sitting on an untapped pool of thousands of contacts. So why not make email databases work harder for you and squeeze out additional revenue opportunities by integrating them to Facebook and Twitter?

Here are some top tips on how you can join the dots with your email and social strategy:

1. Firstly, get your data organised. You’ll likely have email databases of some description at your organisation – maybe even have a couple of different databases split by interest, or interaction with your brand (website registration, competition entrants or monthly newsletter signups). You can use all of these different datasets to create super tailored groups to push adverts to.

Think about what links your databases together; is it worth keeping your B2B and consumer contacts separate? Perhaps you may be able to merge two campaign databases together if they targeted similar users. The good news is that once you’ve cleaned up your email addresses, connecting them to Facebook and Twitter is super-easy as they both except Excel files. You can even merge your contacts straight from MailChimp into Facebook.

2. The chances are that you already have a brand presence on Facebook, however it’s unlikely that all your email contacts have joined your page. It is technically possible to upload email database contacts onto Facebook, although not all brand pages have this option. To see if you’re one of the lucky ones, go to your brand page and look for “Build Audience”, in the dropdown box select “Invite Email Contacts”. Facebook will then scan the email addresses for corresponding personal accounts and deliver notifications suggesting your contacts join your page. This is a really simple way to quickly grow your page using your existing assets, but the value of your email contacts further increases with long-term targeted advertising campaigns.

3. Creating “Custom Audiences” on Facebook and Twitter with your email databases allows you to add another layer to your advertising campaigns. You will now be able to deliver specific ads to these groups, rather than broad interests or the pages that people are interested in. Instead of blitzing one group of users with the same message, you’ll have the ability to create ultra-targeted content and advertising that speaks directly to that audience. With a narrower focus, your campaigns will be more relevant and simply put, more engaging.

4. Once you’ve uploaded your database to Facebook or Twitter you also now have ability to build a lookalike audience – further increasing your ROI from one database. It’s a powerful tool where each social network will review the email addresses you’ve uploaded and suggest similar people to target. Imagine uploading a small dataset of contacts you met at a niche industry trade show, you’ll now get access to a much wider set of similar users.

You can even upload an ultra-targeted group of contacts to push tailored ads to. This could even create a mini-database of 10-20 contacts such as new-business prospects, your super fans, or beta testers. With a small group of people to target you can have a lot of fun with creative ad campaigns that speak to these users. You won’t be going mass, but that’s not the aim here, you’ll be able to target a cluster of high-value contacts.

5. A lot of people don’t know that as a LinkedIn user (across both free and premium accounts) you have the ability to download your LinkedIn contacts. By default you’ll get access to first and second names, the company someone works at and their job title. Most powerful of all is that you’ll get the email address that they use to login on LinkedIn. The data saves as a user-friendly Excel file. Brilliant!

Now, you need to be a bit careful about how you use this data as uploading all your LinkedIn contact’s email addresses to create a targeted advertising group on Facebook and Twitter is against the rules. But imagine pooling together the LinkedIn databases of your senior team - once you’ve collated and sifted through the Excel data you’re now sitting on a powerful asset and with a little creative flair you can run some exciting campaigns.

These are just a few examples how you can make your email addresses work harder for you by connecting them to your social strategy. These databases, big or small, are a great asset and can really help you to generate revenue from an under-utilised asset. It’s time we made data earn its keep.

 

By Karel Kumar, Senior Social Media Manager at Collider. 

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